House Judiciary Passes PRO-IP Act with Coordinator’s Role Reduced

PRO-IP goes to the full House for a vote. It was approved earlier by the IP Subcommittee after legislators stripped it of broad forfeiture provisions and language creating violations for each work on “compilations.”

Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., noted new backing for the bill by groups historically wary of new IP laws. They include CEA, Digital Media Association, NetCoalition and Internet Commerce Coalition. Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said the Justice Department filed only 217 IP crime cases in FY2007, accounting for one-third of 1 percent of all federal criminal cases. “Some officials appear to be ignoring our bipartisan efforts” to protect IP, he said. Conyers and Smith said in a Wednesday op-ed piece in The Hill that the administration “refused to come to the negotiating table.”

The Bush administration provided no “detailed proposals” for the legislation, but the amendment “anticipates” them, said IP Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif. The administration’s Strategy Targeting Organized Piracy effort isn’t permanent and needs PRO-IP’s legal framework to remain successful, Berman said. The amendment preserves the “primacy and independence” of agencies with IP duties but makes clear that they need improved coordination through a White House office, he said.

The manager’s amendment recasts the IP enforcement coordinator in a supporting role in several contexts and says creation of the new office won’t change any agency’s criminal prosecution, border protection or international trade authority. The coordinator now is “a principal” adviser and “a senior” representative, not “the” principal and senior, as in the original. The coordinator will write “recommendations” for allocating resources in enforcement, not delegate and authorize such resources. The coordinator will need federal, state and local agency “consent” to use their resources and is reduced to monitoring agencies to ensure they share data on IP enforcement. The IP coordinator had an active role in the original bill, but now generally has a passive function.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., tangled with Berman over the relaxed forfeiture provisions, which she said still could ensnare “innocent bystanders.” “If you were the parent of a teenager or a sophomore in college whose computer is available to many other students, you don’t have the… wherewithal to protect yourself or your child” from “disproportionate and unfair punishment” for illegal downloading, she said. Berman noted that the bill requires a “substantial connection” to infringement for forfeiture to be invoked, and said innocent people are “clearly exempted.” But the RIAA has “made a business out of extorting money from students” unable to defend themselves in court, Lofgren said. She said she had planned to introduce an amendment to pare back forfeiture provisions but decided it wouldn’t have support.

Intellectual property advocates cheered the measure’s passage. MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman said the bill would buff the U.S. “economic outlook” by adding jobs. Infringement is a threat to songwriters and fighting it deserves more resources, said David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers Association. The “anti-IP movement is proving increasingly resourceful and sophisticated in circumventing intellectual property rights,” said Caroline Joiner, executive director of the U.S. Chamber’s Global IP Center. Copyright Alliance Executive Director Patrick Ross said small-time creators need their rights protected by PRO- IP as much as corporations do.

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn saw the amended forfeiture provisions differently than the group’s usual ally Lofgren, praising the “substantial connection” requirement. But Sohn said the committee also should pass the Orphan Works Act, which would provide more limited remedies for owners of orphan works than currently allowed, to “restore balance in copyright law.”